Implementation of the individual placement and support pilot program in Spain

This article describes the adoption of Individual Placement and Support (IPS) supported employment between 2013 and 2017 in Catalonia (Spain) in the context of high unemployment and a predominance of traditional preemployment training approaches. It reports the experience of implementing IPS to promote competitive job placement of people with mental disorders.

The Avedis Donabedian Research Institute (FAD) designed, trained, implemented, and evaluated the project. We used a longitudinal, mixed-methods approach.

The demonstration project comprised 7 employment services and 12 ambulatory mental health centers. It followed up programs and participants from October 2013 to December 2017. The project added 1,188 new competitive jobs, increased the rate of competitive employment from 16% to 43%, and improved the fidelity of IPS by 44% on the organizational dimension and by 34% on services dimension. The quality of employment was similar to the overall employment market, with 94% of temporary jobs. The qualitative analysis confirmed several areas of improvement, including the vision of recovery, collaborations between vocational and mental health services, work patterns of practitioners, and views of work as an important treatment.

A strong leadership team, consistent training, and commitment to model fidelity have established IPS in the pilot region as an important intervention to obtain and maintain competitive employment and recovery for people with a mental health condition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).